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Supreme Court to review FHFA structure, FTC restitution, and TCPA autodialing
On July 9, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review the following cases:
- FHFA Constitutionality. The Court agreed to review the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit’s en banc decision in Collins. v. Mnuchin (covered by InfoBytes here), which concluded that the FHFA’s structure—which provides the director with “for cause” removal protection—violates the Constitution’s separation of powers requirements. As previously covered by a Buckley Special Alert last month, the Court held that a similar clause in the Dodd-Frank Act that requires cause to remove the director of the CFPB violates the constitutional separation of powers. The Court further held that the removal provision could—and should—be severed from the statute establishing the CFPB, rather than invalidating the entire statute.
- FTC Restitution Authority. The Court granted review in two cases: (i) the 9th Circuit’s decision in FTC V. AMG Capital Management (covered by InfoBytes here), which upheld a $1.3 billion judgment against the petitioners for allegedly operating a deceptive payday lending scheme and concluded that a district court may grant any ancillary relief under the FTC Act, including restitution; and (ii) the 7th Circuit’s FTC v. Credit Bureau Center (covered by InfoBytes here), which held that Section 13(b) of the FTC Act does not give the FTC power to order restitution. The Court consolidated the two cases and will decide whether the FTC can demand equitable monetary relief in civil enforcement actions under Section 13(b) of the FTC Act.
- TCPA Autodialer Definition. The Court agreed to review the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit’s decision in Duguid v. Facebook, Inc. (covered by InfoBytes here), which concluded the plaintiff plausibly alleged the social media company’s text message system fell within the definition of autodialer under the TCPA. The 9th Circuit applied the definition from their 2018 decision in Marks v. Crunch San Diego, LLC (covered by InfoBytes here), which broadened the definition of an autodialer to cover all devices with the capacity to automatically dial numbers that are stored in a list. The 2nd Circuit has since agreed with the 9th Circuit’s holding in Marks. However, these two opinions conflict with holdings by the 3rd, 7th, and 11th Circuits, which have held that autodialers require the use of randomly or sequentially generated phone numbers, consistent with the D.C. Circuit’s holding that struck down the FCC’s definition of an autodialer in ACA International v. FCC (covered by a Buckley Special Alert).
District court preliminarily approves $6.8 million TCPA settlement
On July 6, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California granted preliminary approval to a nearly $6.8 million settlement between class members and a collection agency that allegedly violated the TCPA, FDCPA, and California’s Rosenthal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act by making calls using an autodialer or prerecorded voice in an attempt to collect purported debts. The lead plaintiff filed a proposed class action suit in 2016 against the collection agency claiming he received at least 25 calls to his cell phone even though he never consented to receiving such calls in the first place and had instructed the collection agency to stop calling him.
According to the court’s order, the settlement consists of two sub-classes: (i) one class of individuals from anywhere in the U.S. who subscribed to call management applications and received automated calls from the defendant without providing the proper consent; and (ii) another class of individuals living in California who received automated calls from the defendant regarding their purported debts. The terms of the settlement provides for a $1.8 million cash fund and requires the forgiveness of nearly $5 million in outstanding debts for class members with existing accounts owned by either the collection agency or one of its affiliates.
FCC narrows “autodialer” definition
On June 25, the FCC narrowed the Commission’s definition of an “autodialer,” providing that “if a calling platform is not capable of originating a call or sending a text without a person actively and affirmatively manually dialing each one, that platform is not an autodialer and calls or texts made using it are not subject to the TCPA’s restrictions on calls and texts to wireless phones.” The FCC reiterated that only sequential number generators or other systems that can store or produce numbers to be called or texted at random are the only technologies considered to be autodialers. The FCC further noted that whether a system can make a large number of calls in a short period of time does not factor into whether the system is considered an autodialer, and that message senders may avoid TCPA liability by obtaining prior express consent from recipients. The FCC issued the ruling in response to an alliance’s 2018 petition, which asked the FCC to clarify whether the definition of an autodialer applied to peer-to-peer messaging (P2P) platforms that, among other things, allow organizations to text a large number of individuals and require a person to manually send each text message one at a time. The FCC declined to rule on whether any particular P2P text platform is an autodialer due to the lack of sufficient factual basis.
The FCC issued a separate declaratory ruling the same day reiterating that the TCPA requires autodialer or robocall senders to obtain prior express consent before making any texts or robocalls, stressing that the “mere existence of a caller-consumer relationship does not satisfy the prior-express-consent requirement for calls to wireless numbers, nor does it create an exception to this requirement.” The ruling was issued in response to a health benefit company’s 2015 petition, which asked the FCC to exempt health plans and providers, as well as certain non-emergency, urgent health care-related calls, from the prior consent requirement as long as the company permitted consumers to opt out after the fact.
As previously covered by InfoBytes, several appellate courts have issued conflicting decisions with respect to the definition of an autodialer.
District court holds text system is not an autodialer under 7th Circuit definition
On June 15, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana granted a motion for summary judgment in favor of a collection agency and another company (collectively, “defendants”) with respect to the plaintiff’s TCPA allegations, holding that the system used to send text messages to class members’ cell phones is not an automatic telephone dialing system (autodialer). According to the opinion, the plaintiff filed the class action alleging, among other things, that the defendants violated the TCPA by sending unsolicited text messages using an autodialer to cell phones after the recipients replied with “stop.” The parties submitted cross-motions for summary judgment, which were stayed pending the outcome of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit decision in Gadelhak v. AT&T Servs., Inc. As previously covered by InfoBytes, the 7th Circuit held in February that to be an autodialer under the TCPA, the system must both store and produce phone numbers “using a random or sequential number generator.” After reviewing the cross-motions in light of the 7th Circuit decision, the court concluded that the system used by the defendants is not an autodialer under the controlling definition because the defendants’ system sends text messages to cell phone numbers from stored customer lists. Notwithstanding the fact that neither party disputes that the text messages sent to the class members post-“stop” message were without their consent, the court granted summary judgment in favor of the defendants because the text messages were not sent using an autodialer.
District court allows class autodialer claims to proceed against mortgage lender
On May 18, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan denied a request to dismiss a putative class action concerning alleged violations of the TCPA, ruling that the plaintiff plausibly alleged the mortgage lender (defendant) sent unsolicited texts through the use of an automatic telephone dialing system (autodialer). The plaintiff claimed, among other things, that (i) the texts came by way of SMS short codes, which are “reserved for automatically made text messages”; (ii) the messages were generic and non-personal; (iii) the messages followed a similar calling pattern; and (iv) the plaintiff continued to receive them after opting out. The defendant countered that the claims should be dismissed because the plaintiff’s argument is “devoid of plausible allegations” under the TCPA that it used an autodialer that has the capacity to produce telephone numbers using a random or sequential number generator. However, the court determined that, in the absence of direction from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit “as to the kind of supporting factual allegations that must be included to sufficiently allege the [autodialer] element of a TCPA case,” the court will follow other district courts that have allowed TCPA suits to continue if the plaintiff sufficiently alleges facts to plausibly support a finding that an autodialer was used.
District court says $267 million robocall verdict is not unconstitutionally excessive
On April 17, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California issued an order granting in part and denying in part several motions pertaining to a class action lawsuit, which accused a debt collection agency (defendant) of violating the TCPA, FDCPA, and the California Rosenthal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act by using repeated robocalls and pre-recorded voices messages to collect debt. As previously covered by InfoBytes, last September the court entered a $267 million final judgment against the defendant, consistent with a jury’s verdict that found the defendant liable for violating the TCPA by making more than 500,000 unsolicited robocalls using autodialers. Under the terms of the judgment each class member was awarded $500 per call. The defendant argued that the award was unconstitutionally excessive and violated due process, and requested that the court reduce the per violation amount. The court was unpersuaded and upheld the judgment, stating that the defendant failed to identify (and the court could not find) any “Ninth Circuit authority on how a district court should reduce damages that are found to be unconstitutionally excessive.” While acknowledging that the award was “significant,” the court stated that it also “evidences the fervor with which the United States Congress was attempting to regulate the use of autodialers for non-consensual calls” and that “the unilateral slashing of an award does not only ignore the plain words of the statute, the task is devoid of objectivity.” Among other actions, the court granted the defendant’s request to amend the final judgment to reflect that allegations concerning “willful and/or knowing violations of the TCPA” were dismissed with prejudice and that the defendant succeeded at summary judgment on the FDCPA and state law claims. However, the court denied the defendant’s request to release any surplus or residue amounts not distributed to a class member back to the company. The court also approved the class counsel’s motion for more than $89 million in attorneys’ fees and non-taxable costs of $277,416.28, and awarded the named plaintiff a $25,000 service award.
Supreme Court schedules oral arguments to review TCPA debt collection exemption
On April 15, the U.S. Supreme Court announced it will hear oral arguments via telephone conference on May 6 in a case concerning an exemption to the TCPA that allows debt collectors to use an autodialer to contact individuals on their cell phones without obtaining prior consent to do so when collecting debts guaranteed by the federal government. As previously covered by InfoBytes, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit held that the government-debt exemption contravenes the First Amendment’s Free Speech Clause, and found that the challenged exemption was a content-based restriction on free speech that did not hold up to strict scrutiny review. The petitioners—Attorney General William Barr and the FCC—ask the Court to review whether the government-debt exception to the TCPA’s automated-call restriction is a violation of the First Amendment, and if so, whether the proper remedy is to sever the exception from the remainder of the statute.
2nd Circuit joins 9th Circuit in broadening the definition of an autodialer under TCPA
On April 7, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit vacated a district court’s order granting summary judgment in favor of a defendant in a TCPA action. The decision results from a lawsuit filed by a plaintiff who claimed to have received more than 300 unsolicited text messages from the defendant through the use of an autodialer after the plaintiff texted a code to receive free admission to a party. The defendant countered that the programs used to send the text messages were not autodialers because they “required too much human intervention when dialing,” and therefore did not fall under the TCPA. The district court granted the defendant’s motion for summary judgment, agreeing that the defendant’s programs were not autodialers because a human being determined when the text messages are sent.
On appeal, the 2nd Circuit concluded that while human beings do play some role in the defendant’s systems, “[c]licking ‘send’ does not require enough human intervention to turn an automatic dialing system into an non-automatic one.” According to the appellate court, “[a]s the FCC additionally clarified in 2012, the statutory definition of an [autodialer] ‘covers any equipment that has the specified capacity to generate numbers and dial them without human intervention regardless of whether the numbers called are randomly or sequentially generated or come from calling lists.’” (Emphasis in the original.) “The FCC’s interpretation of the statute is consistent with our own, for only an interpretation that permits an [autodialer] to store numbers—no matter how produced—will also allow for the [autodialer] to dial from non-random, non-sequential ‘calling lists.’ . . . What matters is that the system can store those numbers and make calls using them.”
The 2nd Circuit’s opinion is consistent with the 9th Circuit’s holding in Marks v. Crunch San Diego, LLC (covered by InfoBytes here). However, these two opinions conflict with holdings by the 3rd, 7th, and 11th Circuits, which have held that autodialers require the use of randomly or sequentially generated phone numbers, consistent with the D.C. Circuit’s holding that struck down the FCC’s definition of an autodialer in ACA International v. FCC (covered by a Buckley Special Alert).
7th Circuit: Dialing system that cannot generate random or sequential numbers is not an autodialer under the TCPA
On February 19, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit affirmed a district court’s ruling that a dialing system that lacks the capacity to generate random or sequential numbers does not meet the definition of an automatic telephone dialing system (autodialer) under the TCPA. According to the 7th Circuit, an autodialer must both store and produce phone numbers “using a random or sequential number generator.” The decision results from a lawsuit filed by a consumer alleging a company sent text messages without first receiving his prior consent as required by the TCPA. However, according to the 7th Circuit, the company’s system—the autodialer in this case—failed to meet the TCPA’s statutory definition of an autodialer because it “exclusively dials numbers stored in a customer database” and not numbers obtained from a number generator. As such, the company did not violate the TCPA when it sent unwanted text messages to the consumer, the appellate court wrote.
Though the appellate court admitted that the wording of the provision “is enough to make a grammarian throw down her pen” as there are at least four possible ways to read the definition of an autodialer in the TCPA, the court concluded that while its adopted interpretation—that “using a random or sequential number generator” describes how the numbers are “stored” or “produced”—is “admittedly imperfect,” it “lacks the more significant problems” of other interpretations and is thus the “best reading of a thorny statutory provision.”
The 7th Circuit’s opinion is consistent with similar holdings by the 11th and 3rd Circuits (covered by InfoBytes here and here), which have held that autodialers require the use of randomly or sequentially generated phone numbers, as well as the D.C. Circuit’s holding in ACA International v. FCC, which struck down the FCC’s definition of an autodialer (covered by a Buckley Special Alert here). However, these opinions conflict with the 9th Circuit’s holding in Marks v. Crunch San Diego, LLC, (covered by InfoBytes here), which broadened the definition of an autodialer to cover all devices with the capacity to automatically dial numbers that are stored in a list.
11th Circuit offers new autodialer definition under TCPA
On January 27, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit issued a split opinion on the definition of an automatic telephone dialing system (autodialer) within the context of the TCPA. The TCPA defines an autodialer as “equipment which has the capacity—(A) to store or produce telephone numbers to be called, using a random or sequential number generator; and (B) to dial such numbers.” According to the 11th Circuit, “to be an auto-dialer, the equipment must (1) store telephone numbers using a random or sequential number generator and dial them or (2) produce such numbers using a random or sequential number generator and dial them.”
In the first case, a Florida plaintiff filed the putative class action complaint alleging a hotel chain used an autodialer to call her cell phone without her consent. (Previously covered by InfoBytes here.) The hotel moved for summary judgment, arguing that the system did not qualify as an autodialer under the TCPA because it required a hotel agent to click “Make Call” before the system dialed the number. The court agreed, concluding that the defining characteristic of an autodialer is “the capacity to dial numbers without human intervention,” which the court noted remains unchanged even in light of the D.C. Circuit decision in ACA International v. FCC (covered by a Buckley Special Alert here). In the second case, a plaintiff contended a loan servicer placed 35 calls to her cell phone about unpaid student loans. However, in this instance, the district court ruled that the company used an autodialer because the system did not require human intervention and had the capacity to automatically dial a stored list of numbers. Additionally, the court ruled that 13 of the 35 calls were willful violations of the TCPA.
On appeal, the appellate court affirmed the district court’s ruling in the first case, concluding that the hotel calling system, which required human intervention before a call was placed and “used randomly or sequentially generated numbers,” did not qualify as an autodialer under the TCPA. The appellate court, however, partially affirmed and partially reversed the district court’s ruling in the second case, holding that while 13 of the calls received by the plaintiff were placed using an artificial or prerecorded voice (a separate violation of the TCPA), the phone system used in this case did not qualify as an autodialer because it did not use random or sequentially generated numbers. One of the judges stated in a partial dissent, however, that she read the TCPA to cover equipment that only has the capacity to dial and not produce random numbers, similar to the phone system used by the loan servicer. The 11th Circuit’s opinion is consistent with the D.C. Circuit’s holding in ACA International, which struck down the FCC’s definition of an autodialer; however it conflicts with the 9th Circuit’s holding in Marks v. Crunch San Diego, LLC (InfoBytes coverage here), which broadened the definition of an autodialer to cover all devices with the capacity to automatically dial numbers that are stored in a list.